


the only fair thing

by kat777



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Family, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Matchmaking, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-23 00:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7459353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat777/pseuds/kat777
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It should’ve been Robb or Arya sharing the bed with Jon. That would’ve been the only fair thing. They were the ones who'd thrown tantrums as kids and begged for Robb's best friend Jon to be included in every Stark family outing ever. They were the ones who'd started the tradition. Robb was the one who’d sworn up and down for weeks that he and his wife weren't going to the cottage this year only to change his mind at the last minute, and Arya was the one who had booked a place with too many double beds and not enough singles.</p><p>And yet somehow, it was Sansa who ended up alone together with Jon Snow in a confined space for the first time since— Well, since the last time they’d been alone together in a confined space. With…far less clothing present. </p><p>This was going to be a very long week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the only fair thing

**Author's Note:**

> You can never have too much sharing-a-bed fic for your OTP, and you can also never have too much Stark family fluff. That is my only explanation for why I wrote this fic.
> 
> Normally I set modern day ASoIaF/GoT fics in Somewhere Vaguely Resembling A Place That Might Possibly Exist In America, I Dunno I've Never Been And I Did No Research, but since I drew a lot from my own experiences at cottages for this fic, I decided to set it in Definitely Somewhere In Ontario, Canada.
> 
> I didn't go into backstory within the story, but just know that Lyanna raised Jon and is still alive and healthy and happy. So are Elia Martell and her kids, and even though he wasn't raised with them, Jon eventually got to know his half-siblings Rhaenys and Aegon.
> 
> Anyways, I'm sure this will come as a huge shock, but I'm not GRRM or D&D and I don't own either the books or the show.

It was only fair that Robb be the one to share the bed with Jon. Robb was the one who’d sworn up and down that Jeyne had to work for the duration of their annual trip to the lake, and then at the last minute announced that he’d misunderstood a conversation with his wife weeks ago and they’d be joining the rest of the family, after all.

But apparently Robb’s marriage was _new_ and _fragile_ , and what if it didn’t survive Jeyne having to share a bed with her husband’s bossy sister for a week? How would Sansa feel _then_ , Arya wanted to know.

“Are you kidding me? People do not get divorced over things like that!” Sansa fought the urge to pull over to the side of the empty highway so she could turn around and glare at her sister properly.

“But _what if_ , Sansa,” Arya repeated, leaning forward to convey her urgency, hands inching along the armrests of the seat in front of her.

As if on cue, Rickon suddenly unglued himself from his 3DS and looked up at Sansa with wide, watering eyes. “Robb and Jeyne are so happy together!” he said. “You can’t ruin that!”

Sansa eyed him suspiciously. Rickon hadn’t cried in front of her since he was eight and their mother had thrown his favourite stuffed animal into the dryer, suspecting it was carrying lice. (Poor Shaggydog had never been the same.) Why was it, exactly, that Rickon had chosen to ride with her and Arya today rather than with Bran and their parents and their uncle last night? Why had Arya crawled into the back without fuss, granting their little brother the passenger seat which she normally claimed before anyone else could protest?

Rickon was rubbing an unusually red spot on his elbow, but he stopped the moment he noticed Sansa watching and hurriedly bent over his smash-something-or-other game. Arya fell back against her seat and made a noise like a cat being strangled, then tried to turn it into a coughing fit.

Sansa ignored her and said, “I won’t ruin anything, Rickon. Robb and Jeyne are happy together, just like you said, because they love each other too much to split up over something silly like one of them having to share a bed with a _perfectly polite and friendly_ sister-in-law.”

“Uh-huh.” Rickon didn’t look up from his game.

Arya, on the other hand, refused to give up so easily. She leaned forward again and hissed, “Exactly, they love each other! A lot! What do you think will happen if they don’t have their own room for…y’know, _alone time_? Do you really want this trip to end with the rest of us scarred for life?”

Before Sansa could respond, Jon’s car appeared in the right wing mirror and quickly drew level with them. He honked the horn at them in greeting while Robb waved a tray of iced caps in the air tauntingly from the back seat. Jeyne snatched it from him just before he spilled the drinks all over himself, and he showered her with kisses in thanks.

Those two wouldn’t last a day without sneaking off for _alone time_ , as Arya had put it, never mind a week.

Rickon reached out and slapped the car horn twice. Arya rolled down her window, gestured for Jon and Robb to do the same, and yelled over the roaring wind, “STOP BEING GROSS, ROBB! MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL AND TELL SANSA TO BUY US ICED CAPS!”

“Sorry, Sis! It’s two hours to the next Tims!”

“NOOOOOOOO!”

“It’s only thirty-five minutes!” Jon corrected as Jeyne held the drinks out of Robb’s reach and scolded him for lying.

“Not the way Sansa drives!”

“DUMP ONE ON HIS HEAD, JEYNE!”

Her sister-in-law pulled one of the drinks from the tray and brandished it at Robb threateningly.

“Sansa!” Jon complained, reaching an arm over the back of his seat and swatting playfully at Jeyne. “This car doesn’t clean itself, you know!”

He was smiling, though. It had been more than a month since she’d last made him smile, and almost as long since she’d last heard him say her name.

Not that she’d really noticed, or anything. Not that she’d been keeping track. Definitely not.

Eventually even good-natured Jon couldn’t take driving at Sansa speed, and they pulled ahead. Rickon put his 3DS down and poked at the GPS instead, trying to find the nearest Tim Hortons. Arya watched and prodded him like that would make the results load faster.

Sansa closed the windows and stared out ahead of her as Jon’s car shrank into the distance. “All right, Arya, you win.”

Her siblings perked up. “Iced caps?” they chorused in unison.

“No.” Their faces fell.

“Well, yes, iced caps,” she corrected herself, and they lit up again. “But I meant that you were right about Jeyne and Robb. They’ll be unbearable if they don’t get to share a room.”

She saw Arya’s mouth curl into a smirk in the rear-view mirror, but said nothing. Let Arya enjoy her victory.

For now.

.

Technically speaking, Sansa’s current predicament was as much Arya’s fault as it was Robb’s. Arya had insisted on being the one to choose their cottage this year, and despite Sansa reminding her several times to make sure there were enough rooms for Jon to have his own space, she’d somehow gotten things mixed up.

Even then, everything would’ve been fine if Robb hadn’t gotten mixed up, too, and so Sansa was willing to let Arya off the hook. Except…

Sansa turned onto the dirt road that would lead them to the cottage. “It’s lucky you booked a place with just enough beds for ten people, Arya, since we were all under the impression there would only be eight of us this year!” _Unbelievably_ lucky, even.

Arya had switched seats with Rickon after they’d stopped at Tim Hortons, so Sansa only had to shift her head a little to see her sister’s pitiful attempts at an easygoing smile. “You know me, I saw the words ‘bunk bed’ and completely forgot about everything else!”

Ah, yes. The bunk bed. The bunk bed Arya and Rickon were supposed to sleep in, while Bran took the single in that room. Sansa would never dream of cheating Bran out of the most easily accessible bed in the place, and she was almost as reluctant to kick out Rickon who had only gotten to sleep in the top bunk once before. The bunks in these cottages were usually teen-sized or smaller, so there was no way she could justify making Jon sleep in one of them while Arya stayed with her.

Clearly, there was only one fair thing to do.

“Speaking of the bunk bed,” Sansa began, and found herself unable to contain her smug grin as she watched Arya’s smile falter.

.

Sansa and Arya spent the rest of the ride arguing back-and-forth over who would sleep in the bunk and who would share with Jon. Sansa phrased her claim as a noble sacrifice: Arya had a fencing match scheduled the day after they got home, and Sansa, loving sister than she was, was willing to subject herself to a cramped bunk bed for a week so that Arya would be in top form for her match. Arya played up her side as the more logical one: Sansa was at least a head taller, and would experience far more discomfort out of the two of them—besides, Arya loved turning the bottom bunk into a little hideaway using a sheets or towels as a makeshift curtain.

Their brother looked between them like he was watching a game of ping pong, and he had his seat belt undone before the car had even come to a complete stop. He threw the door open the second it had and then dove out, yelling for Bran.

Sansa got out of the car and took a few moments to study the cottage Arya had chosen. It was a little more worn than in the online photos but still beautiful, and she could see the lake just behind it, shining brilliantly in the summer sun. More importantly, the place was big enough for ten people to co-exist for a week without throttling each other.

The screen door flew open and Jeyne skipped down the steps of the front porch, calling out a cheerful hello. She informed them that she’d arrived about half an hour ago, and after helping to unload the car, Cat and Ned had left with Uncle Benjen to check out a nearby hiking trail.

“They promised to be back in time for dinner,” she said, helping Sansa hoist a bulky suitcase out of the trunk. “Ned’s lasagna is in the oven and should be ready in less than an hour.”

“And Robb and Jon?” Arya asked, grabbing her duffel bag. “Every year Robb brags about how we can pack anything our little hearts desire and he’ll be able to lift it no matter how heavy, and yet every year when it comes time to actually lift stuff, he’s suddenly vanished off the face of the earth.” She shook her head in exasperation as she set her duffel on the ground and reached for Rickon’s. “But I didn’t expect Jon to be mysteriously absent, too.”

She was exaggerating a bit about Robb—he always showed up to carry things inside after a few minutes—but she was right about Jon. Normally he’d offered them a hand by now.

To Sansa’s surprise, her sister-in-law winced at the question. “Oh, they’re just talking inside.”

“Talking?”

“Arguing,” Jeyne amended.

Arya fixed her with a hard stare. “About…?”

“The, uh…” Her eyes darted to Sansa and then away. “The sleeping arrangements. I told them that I planned to share a bed with you, Sansa, and they could take the other one, and, well…”

“Jon agreed and Robb didn’t,” Sansa said, with the disinterested air of a child listening to the morning weather and traffic report. So Jon didn’t want to share with her, either. That was fine. That was more than fine. That made things easier.

Before Jeyne could reply, the screen door swung open again. “Need some help?” Jon asked as he wheeled Bran’s chair down the porch ramp. Rickon appeared behind them, followed by Robb, and soon the trunk was empty.

Jeyne and Jon brought the last of the bags inside, and the second they were gone Sansa’s siblings surrounded her. 

“…Right, well, I need to use the bathroom, so—” She tried to push past Robb.

He didn’t budge. “I can’t be separated from Jeyne every night for an _entire week_ , Sansa, I’ll perish from longing!”

“If that were true you would’ve died when she went on that business trip to New York back in April,” Sansa pointed out, unmoved by his plight. “Anyways, you won’t be separated, Arya and I talked it over in the car. She’ll stay with Jon and I’ll take the bottom bunk bed.”

“I never agreed to that!” Arya protested, at the same time Robb insisted, “No, no, she can’t share with Jon!”

Sansa folded her arms across her chest. “And why not?”

“Because!” She could almost see the wheels turning frantically in his mind. “Because…”

“Arya has been chasing cats all week!” Rickon blurted out. Everyone stared at him, and he rocked back on his heels, looking pleadingly at Arya. “Right, Sis? Your fencing instructor told you to chase cats, didn’t he? And you caught a few and cuddled them and everything, right?”

Arya was very clearly taken aback. “…Yes?”

Rickon turned to his oldest sister and said, “That means she can’t stay with Jon, because of his allergies!”

There was dead silence for a minute.

“His allergies,” Sansa repeated flatly. “You’re telling me that _Jon Snow_ is allergic to _cats_? Didn’t his ex-girlfriend have four?”

“Five, actually. Why do you think they broke up?” Robb said, gleefully latching on to their little brother’s excuse and running with it. “There’s only so much a man will put up with for love!”

Not that Sansa had been privy to the details of Jon and Ygritte’s break up, but she was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the cats and everything to do with the fact that Ygritte had been about to embark on a year-long mission in space.

“Jon Snow is not allergic to cats!” Sansa looked to Bran for reassurance that not all her siblings were lying weasels, but he just stared back at her solemnly. Her forehead creased as her eyebrows pulled together. “…Is he?”

“He is.”

If it had been anyone other than sweet Bran, she wouldn’t have believed it. At no point in the past twenty-one years had anyone mentioned a damn thing to her about Jon Snow having _cat allergies_. No wonder Jon had avoided her like the plague that long weekend he’d stayed at her apartment because his roommate’s girlfriend was visiting—she’d been looking after her friend Mya’s cat.

Uncle Benjen had occupied the couch pull-out every year since she turned three, Robb and Jeyne had to have a room to themselves for the greater good, Bran needed the single bed, she couldn’t bring herself to deprive Rickon of the top bunk, forcing Jon to endure either back pain or aggravated allergies would be selfish, and the thought of explaining any part of this situation to either of her parents made her want to melt into the floor.

There was just nothing else for it.

.

“Sansa, what are you doing?” Jon almost shouted to be heard over the deafening pounding, watching bemusedly as she set a sleeping bag down on the floor as far from the bed as possible.

She tossed her pillow down beside it. “What does it look like I’m doing?”             

“It looks like you’re turning into a thieving martyr,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the floor, all I need is a pillow and a blanket. Give the sleeping bag back to Rickon before he breaks down the door, for heaven’s sake. You’re too tall for it anyways.”

Part of her wanted to go along with what he was saying. If he would rather sleep on the cold wooden floor than next to her in a warm comfy bed, who was she to stop him? Another part of her would’ve rather gone skinny-dipping outside in the middle of winter than let him believe he was more averse to being stuck with her than she was to being stuck with him.

The rest of her wanted to just _not care_ either way.

Maybe it was that last part that made her pick up the sleeping bag, yank the door open, and shove the thing into her indignant little brother’s arms. Maybe it was the obnoxious banging. She shut the door in Rickon’s face before he could utter a sarcastic thank you, and then turned and rested her back against it.

Meeting Jon’s gaze head on, Sansa said, “It wouldn’t be fair of me to make you sleep on the floor. We’ll share the bed.”

He stiffened. “But—”

“This isn’t high school,” she snapped, stung by his obvious dread despite herself. She drew herself up to her full height and lifted her chin haughtily. “We’re adults and we’ve been acquainted since quite literally the day after I was born. This is barely any different than if I was sharing with Robb or you were sharing with Rhaenys.” 

Jon stared at her in disbelief, and if she were in the mood to be honest, she’d admit that she couldn’t blame him. This was completely different than if either of them were sharing with one of their respective siblings, hence why Sansa had spent the majority of the four-hour car ride desperately plotting a way out of the situation.

Sansa was not in the mood to be honest. She was in the mood to surrender herself up to the sweet oblivion of sleep and leave this awkwardness behind, at least for a few hours.

(And the ache in her chest. She wanted to leave that behind, too.)

“Right,” Jon said at last, incredulity smoothing into blank formality. “No different.”

He strode over to his duffel bag and took out a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. “I’ll change in the bathroom down the hall.”

“Thank you.” She moved away from the door and he left the room without another word.

.

Later she lay in the dark, staring up at ceiling, trying to tune out the sound of Jon’s breathing as he slept beside her.

She managed it eventually, but try as she might, she didn’t quite manage to tune out thoughts of all the ways she’d been “acquainted” with Jon Snow not so long ago.

And the ways she hadn’t.

* * *

“Jon, could you please pass me the maple syrup?” Sansa asked politely.

Jon politely passed Sansa the maple syrup. He returned her polite, “Thank you very much,” with his own polite, “You’re very welcome.” Then he went back to politely stabbing his pancakes with a fork, ignoring the way Arya and Robb watched him like hawks.

His ex-girlfriend Ygritte had often told him he knew nothing, and while there were times when he felt like she might’ve been right, this wasn’t one of them. Jon would’ve had to be a complete idiot to miss what Robb and Arya were up to—they’d gone so far as to involve Rickon and even Bran, after all—and willfully ignorant as well.

He would give an arm and a leg to be able to go back in time and stop them from messing with the sleeping arrangements, but he’d settle for getting them to stop staring at him as if they’d expected his relationship with Sansa to undergo some miraculous transformation overnight.

The only real change that had occurred was Jon learning that in Sansa’s eyes, he was apparently somewhere between an acquaintance and a pseudo-brother. Personally, Jon felt that the third or fourth time someone went down on you really should disqualify them from being an acquaintance, let alone a pseudo-sibling, but then, he and Sansa had never actually discussed how either of them viewed their relationship.

“Jon, could you please pass me the sugar bowl?”

Mistakes like that were why he sometimes felt Ygritte had been right and he really did know nothing.

He couldn’t pinpoint how things had started between them; all he knew was that the moment their friends and family members started commenting on what was going on, suddenly _nothing_ was going on.

Nothing negative had been said by those friends and family members, so he couldn’t rightly blame any of them. He couldn’t even say that Sansa alone had been responsible for things between them coming to an end. It wasn’t like she’d changed her number or moved away without telling him. He could’ve texted her. Called her. Knocked on her door. Sent her a singing telegram.

“Jon? The sugar bowl?”

He hadn’t done any of those things, and he could tell himself ‘til kingdom come that he’d stopped contacting her because she’d given him the impression she wanted it that way, but the truth was that she hadn’t done anything of the sort. There’d been no final conversation, no closure. They’d simply…disappeared from each other’s lives between one day and the next.

And he hadn’t done a damn thing about it.

“Jon!”

Jon tore his eyes away from the pancakes he’d been butchering and found Catelyn staring at him with her eyebrows raised. He had to fight the urge to look down at his plate again—sometimes he forgot how much Catelyn looked like her eldest daughter. (Or. The other way around, he supposed.)

“Sorry, I spaced out.” He managed to quirk his lips into an apologetic smile. “What was it you asked for? The marmalade?”

“The sugar bowl,” she corrected, and after he’d passed it to her she surprised him by smirking. “No one likes that godforsaken mush but Ned.”

“It’s a disgrace to even have it at the table,” Uncle Benjen agreed, never one to miss out on ribbing his older brother.

(Uncle Benjen wasn’t really Jon’s uncle, but Jon's mother had always referred to him that way to Jon. Jon had actually thought it was his full name up until the age of seven.)

“Marmalade is refreshing and wholesome,” Ned said mildly, folding his hands together and looking around at each of his children in turn, waiting for one of them to back him up.

Instead Rickon made a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “Real Canadians don’t eat marmalade, Dad.”

“Real Canadians chug three bottles of maple syrup every morning and _like it_ ,” Bran said.

“Then we trek through a blizzard and battle a polar bear on the way to work,” Arya chimed in. “With a hockey stick.”

Sansa’s smirk was identical to her mother’s as she tacked on, “Then after work we go back and apologize to the polar bear.”

That was too much for Jon. _Sansa_ was too much for Jon. Her wit and her timing and the way her smirk melted into a smile when he burst into laughter…

“First my wife, then my brother, and finally my own children.” Ned shook his head. “It’s all up to you now, Robb.” He slid the jar of marmalade to his eldest son, who recoiled from it as though it were poison.

“Oh, come on, Robb. You could at least try it!” Jeyne spoke up for her father-in-law. “Marmalade isn’t half bad.”

Ned smiled at her. “Jeyne, you are my only true friend at this table, and you can replace these disloyal ingrates in the will.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Robb declared over the immediate objections of his siblings.

Jeyne twirled her wedding ring around her finger. “Actually, darling, I think it’s time we had a talk about the future of our marriage…”

Arya snickered as Robb clutched at his chest like he’d been fatally wounded, and Jon relaxed for the first time that morning.

Sleeping beside Sansa every night this week would be awkward and miserable and painfully wonderful, but at least her siblings would forget their scheming before long, and eventually, he’d be able to put all this behind him.

Really.

.

Jon’s optimism lasted right up until he decided to bow out of his fifth round of poker and turn in for the night. Catelyn, Uncle Benjen, and Arya barely looked up as he put down his cards and said goodnight, too absorbed in the game.

As he climbed the stairs slowly, one step at a time, he wondered if Sansa would still be awake when he entered their room. He wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse than walking in to find her curled up under the blankets, features relaxed the way they normally weren’t in his presence these days, snoring lightly.

It turned out there was a third, far worse option: walking in to find Sansa curled up under the blankets, conveniently facing away from him, _pretending_ to snore.

Jon got his stuff and went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When he came back he looked at her tense shoulders and thought about saying something, but all that came out of his mouth was a tired sigh. He slipped under the covers, careful to keep his distance, and shut his eyes.

So busy trying to quiet his unruly thoughts, he didn’t notice Sansa shift beside him. “Jon?”

He nearly jumped out of his skin. He rolled to face her and saw that she was now on her back, watching him with her brows furrowed.

“Sansa?” It felt too intimate, speaking her name so softly in the dark with her lying so close to him, and he wished he could take it back. There’d been nights not so long ago when he’d had her far, far closer, and he’d whispered her name right into her skin as her fingers stroked through his hair.

“Can I ask you something?”

Something dangerously like hope sparked in his chest, and he kept his answer short, afraid his voice would come out rough and uneven as his breathing. “Sure.”

“Are you allergic to cats?”

The hope died but warmth bloomed in its place, creeping steadily through his limbs and into the hushed laughter he couldn’t hold back. “No, I’m not allergic to cats.”

“Oh.”

He waited for her to explain but she didn’t say anything further, just shifted again until he was left looking at the back of her head.

She’d smiled for a second there, though, and that had to count for something.

* * *

They spent their days at the lake, swimming or canoeing or sunbathing, or else split up into two cars, one headed for the hiking trails, the other headed for the closest town. They had picnics and barbecues for lunch and took turns making dinner, and when the sun went down they built up a roaring bonfire in the fire pit and roasted marshmallows.

Sometimes Arya and Bran told ghost stories to Rickon while the rest of them talked amongst themselves, about sports or music or what was going on in the world, about life. Sometimes Uncle Benjen shared tales of the mischief he’d gotten up to with his brother as a kid, while Ned shook his head and claimed it was all lies and slander.

Eventually they drifted inside after carefully extinguishing the fire, sometimes one by one or in two and threes, sometimes all together. Then they’d argue over what movie to watch, or Jeyne would choose a board game, or Robb would suggest charades. Sansa would scrounge together a late night snack while Jon carried a half-asleep Rickon to his bunk, at which point Cat would break out the deck of cards and hustle Uncle Benjen out of all his poker chips.

That was around the time Sansa ventured upstairs (except for the third night, when she stayed and hustled her mother out of Uncle Benjen’s poker chips through a haphazard combination of determination, the element of surprise, and sheer luck), got ready for bed, and then either cracked open a book or used her phone to take advantage of the cottage’s supposedly free Wi-Fi.

Jon usually stayed downstairs longer, and on the fourth night she managed to fall asleep before he joined her in the bedroom. The other nights she feigned sleep, or else pretended she was actually interested in the Facebook page of a random old classmate from high school who she hadn’t seen in years.

She could’ve just gone to Arya, told her Jon had flat-out said he wasn’t allergic to cats, and then kicked up a huge fuss until her sister finally gave in and agreed to switch rooms, but…

Every time she was about to bring it up, the memory of Jon’s warm, quiet laughter would flash through her mind, and she would think about how she sometimes woke to find him sleeping on his stomach, one arm flung over his head, fingers just barely touching her hair where it was fanned out across her pillow. And how sometimes when she dragged herself out of bed, he grumbled in protest and reached for her before waking up fully, snatching his arm back, and sheepishly telling her good morning. And how much she missed him pulling her to him instead, kissing her lazily despite both of them having morning breath, sliding his fingers through her hair and down her back and under the waistband of her shorts…

(She hadn’t worn shorts to bed once this week, and they both pretended that was normal, just like they both pretended it was normal for Jon to sleep in a pair of sweatpants she was pretty sure he’d had to borrow from Robb.)

And then she would make up an excuse for why she’d approached Arya, and she would end up walking away without having even alluded to the subject.

The more nights that passed, the more she felt like the person she really wanted to talk to was Jon.

.

On the last day Sansa’s siblings apparently realized their plan wasn’t working, and they devoted themselves to maneuvering Sansa and Jon into being alone together.

Rickon said he wanted them to take him canoeing, so they took him canoeing, only for Rickon to abandon them when Arya suddenly showed up in a row boat. (It belonged to the boy staying in the cottage next door. Arya had hung out with him a few times in the past week and referred to him as her friend, which actually made Sansa _less_ hopeful that Arya had gotten permission to take the boat.)

Then Robb and Jeyne treated them to lunch in town, so Sansa and Jon insisted on buying dessert. They went into an ice cream parlor while the other two waited in the car. (Jeyne’s feet were tired, Robb said.) When they left the shop the car was gone, and Jon ended up giving Jeyne’s ice cream to a kid before it could melt. Sansa spitefully ate Robb’s in addition to her own, and then when Robb returned twenty minutes later with excuses, she bought another cone with his favourite flavour and ate it right in front of him.

Bran locked them in the storage shed. (“I dropped the bracelet Meera and Jojen made me while I was picking out a kite to fly,” he said. “I’d look for it myself, but that shed is so cramped I could barely fit my chair inside.”) (He was right about the shed being cramped, though Sansa would wager it was even more so when one was pressed up against the person one had steadfastly been ignoring one’s attraction to.) Her parents found them two hours later and didn’t believe her when she told them how she and Jon had ended up there in the first place.

Needless to say it was a very long day for Sansa, and when she turned in for the night all she wanted to do was sleep.

But she couldn’t.

This was the last night she would be sharing a bed with Jon, and it hit her like a punch in the gut that if she didn’t say something someday soon, she would never have any of this again.

“Jon,” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

Silence. Her chest felt tight. She wasn’t sure she was brave enough to try again louder.

And then he rolled over to face her in the dark. “Yeah.”

She drew in a deep breath and exhaled a sigh, though she wasn’t sure if it was one of relief. It was impossible to pin down what she was feeling; she could barely sort out what she thinking. Her heart was beating too fast and her fingertips were tingling.

“Rickon said you were allergic to cats.” Realizing that statement needed context, she rushed to explain, “I wanted to switch with Arya and stay in the bunk bed, but Arya’s fencing instructor had her chasing cats—don’t ask—and they all said you had allergies so she couldn’t share with you.”

“I see.”

Maybe he did. Maybe he’d always seen, and the reason he’d stopped contacting her was that he didn’t want the same things she did. Maybe she was about to make a fool of herself.

Or maybe he was a fool, too, and just as scared as she was of change and taking chances.

“I would’ve switched with anyone, really, because I knew sharing a bed with you wouldn’t be anything like sharing a bed with Robb. It certainly wasn’t before.” Neither of them had mentioned _before_ since things had ended. She heard him inhale sharply and even in the darkness she could see the way he tensed up, but she wasn’t done. “I said those things because I was upset that you didn’t want to share with me, either. And because you stopped calling and coming around. I know that isn’t fair at all. I’m a bit of a hypocrite like that.”

There was more she wanted to say but her courage failed her. So she just waited for his response, wondering if Rickon was actually using his sleeping bag or if he’d only objected to her taking it on principle. There was no way she was staying in here tonight if Jon broke her heart. He wouldn’t get any sleep with her crying right next to him, for one thing, and he had a four-hour drive tomorrow that he needed to be awake for.

She would probably have to get Arya to drive their mother’s car back, but that would be easy. Her sister would take one look at her puffy eyes and tear-stained face in the morning and promise her the moon if she just swore not to start crying again. Arya didn’t know how to deal with crying people.

“I thought you’d be uncomfortable sleeping next to me,” Jon said. His voice was unsteady and his eyes were trained on something far above her head. “I stopped coming around because I realized things couldn’t stay the same, but I didn’t know how to tell you what I wanted.”

“What did you want?” Sansa reminded herself to breath.

He looked at her then, and for once didn't seem to think before he spoke. “I wanted to keep sharing my bed with you. And your bed, too. And I wanted to share my shower, and your kitchen table, and my couch, and that windowsill in your living room with all those embarrassing pictures of your family lined up in a row—”

Sansa kissed him. Her hand was grasping a fistful of his t-shirt when she pulled back, and his had drifted down through her hair to the small of her back to haul her closer.

“I’ll share anything you want, but I don’t have any embarrassing pictures of you,” she said, pushing him onto his back and straddling him. She grabbed his phone off the bedside table—hers was too far away, she’d have to stop touching him—and fumbled with the camera for a moment.

The flash went off, and Sansa looked at the result and laughed. Jon had screwed his eyes shut tightly against the blinding light, and his skin was unnaturally pale and washed out.

“I can’t exactly leave my phone on your windowsill, you know.”

“We’ll stop off at a Walmart on the way home and buy one of those old-school disposable cameras. I’ll use up all the film taking embarrassing pictures of you and I’ll stick them on the fridge so my neighbours can look through the kitchen window and laugh at you—”

Jon tugged her head down to his and crushed their lips together. He took his phone from her and dropped it back onto the bedside table carelessly like he couldn’t bear to take his hand off her for more than a second, and then he rolled them both over and set to work reacquainting his mouth with her skin.

.

They shared the shower in the morning. “That way the others will have more time to get ready,” Sansa reasoned. (It felt significantly less like a thoughtful gesture once they’d used up all the hot water, but Sansa couldn’t manage even a shred of remorse.)

Then they volunteered to drive to the diner ten minutes away and get breakfast since they were the only ones finished packing. “Sorry, we got stuck in traffic,” Jon lied when they showed up forty minutes later with cold eggs and bacon, and he poured them all cereal instead. (“It’s seven o’clock in the morning and we’re in the middle of nowhere,” Ned said, glowering as he lifted a spoonful of Cocoa Puffs to his mouth. “There is no traffic.”)

“Mom’s car has more room,” she told Robb sweetly as she lifted his suitcase out of Jon’s trunk and deposited it in the arms of her dumbfounded older brother. Jon plied Arya with coffee to get her to agree to four hours with only Robb and Jeyne for company, squished into the back seat with most of the family’s luggage so that everyone else could fit into the remaining car.

“It’s fair,” Sansa insisted when Jon later admitted to feeling a little guilty. “They’re reaping the rewards of their labour.”

Jon laughed as he turned onto the highway. “We _did_ get locked in a shed.”

“Bran was supposed to be the nice sibling,” she said in dismay, shaking her head at the memory. “I’ll never trust him again.”

“I don’t know how they convinced him, but as far as Rickon goes, I’m pretty sure I saw him playing at least two new games on his 3DS this week,” Jon told her. “I can’t, in good conscience, blame a thirteen-year-old for succumbing to bribery by way of free video games.”

Sansa leaned forward to fiddle with the radio. “The worst part was realizing my mother was in on the whole thing.”

“Wait, _what_?” Jon glanced at her as if trying to gauge whether or not she was joking. When he realized she wasn’t, he asked her how she knew.

“Arya booked the cottage this year, but my mother paid for it,” she said. “Do you think Catelyn Tully Stark just handed over her credit card to her barely-legal-to-drink daughter without asking why she'd picked a place big enough for ten people? When supposedly Robb and Jeyne weren't coming, and we’d only need room for eight?”

After opening his mouth and closing it again several times, he finally spluttered, “But she didn’t believe us about Bran and the shed!”

“Oh, she believed us, all right. She probably knew the entire time we were stuck in there.” Sansa gave up on the radio and fell back against her seat. “Face it, we’ve been duped.”

It didn’t take Jon long to sigh and accept the truth. “There’s no way Jeyne didn’t know. Uncle Benjen too, probably. I bet even your dad knew.”

“Probably.”

A comfortable silence settled over the car, and Sansa watched fields of corn and cattle flash by her window until eventually she caught sight of a large sign.

She nudged Jon’s arm and pointed. “Walmart in seventy-five kilometres.”

The smile he gave her was radiant, and it flooded her with warmth that didn’t fade even when he said, “It won’t be open, though. It’s not even half past eight yet.”

“Right, I guess we should just keep driving, then.” Sansa couldn’t help herself. She rolled her eyes. “Nothing we could possibly do to pass the time in an empty parking lot in the middle of nowhere.”

His head jerked towards her, eyes instinctively dropping to her lips. She watched as he forced himself to turn away from her lazy smirk and focus on the road, watched his throat bob as he swallowed hard. 

In a low, hoarse voice, he promised, “Oh, I can think of plenty of things. I’m just not sure they're legal.”

She laid a hand on his thigh, and he swore under his breath.

“You know what they say,” she murmured. “All’s fair in love and war.”

**Author's Note:**

> Real Canadians do in fact eat marmalade, though I'm not sure why. Why have marmalade when you can have maple syrup?
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, and thank you so much for reading!


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